It might be known in the art and is noted in this application a game hall represents a game platform for integrating games (such as recreational games) and for allowing user to access to games. The game hall itself cannot be treated as a game.
Clients manipulated by users, after logging on the game hall, may be in an idle condition without selecting and joining in any games, and/or without initiating any active actions such as actions of initiative downloading. In this application, initiative downloading refers to actions initiated by users of clients to download software, messages, or other audio or video information. Silent downloading differs from initiative downloading at least in that the game platform can automatically download games to the client without being requested by the clients. The silent downloading can be implemented when the client is in the idle condition.
Typically, according to requests by clients to the game platform, corresponding games can be downloaded and installed locally for playing. If the local games cannot technically match with the game hall, redownloading and reinstallation may be required for playing the games.
As shown in FIG. 1, a corresponding method includes steps as follows.
S101: receiving client login information and a command to start a game;
S102: determining whether the game is installed; if not, go to S103; and if yes, go to S104;
S103: downloading a game from a server;
S104: determining whether the game needs to be updated, if yes, go to S105; and if not, go to S106;
S105: downloading update documents from the server;
S106: launching the client to start the game.
The downloading process of the game (see S103, S105) can only be initiated and implemented by the client for example through clicks on corresponding buttons. Therefore, the client often has to wait until the game is downloaded and installed. If a second game needs to be downloaded and installed during playing a first game, the downloading and installing process is prone to deteriorate experience of the first game.